RPG "BWAH" moments...

[Dragonflight]

Every now and then, people in a game do something that makes you as the GM just sit back and go, "BWAH?"
I just had a moment like that, when in the online Chrono game I'm running, half the group have decided to form up a rock band... in the middle of the campaign! Currently they've got Khimera Chang, an altiverse member of the Chang Dynasty from BGC on lead guitar, A D&D Lodoss Elf on backup guitar/lute, A genuine Danzaiver sentai hero on Keytar, a 30 foot Velantian Lensman on drums, and a cute fleet admiral alien girl as lead singer.
I shudder to think who they'll add next. @_@
Anyone else have similar moments?
---
Those who fear the darkness have never seen what the light can do.

[Ebony]

 In our case, it was an In Nomine game where the GM mentioned Little Rock as a town where our investigation pointed out a possible link. It wasn't, and it wasn't even something he had scripted; he just needed a location, and didn't expect us to go there. We had at least two Ofanim (Angels of Motion) in the group, and they both went "Road Trip!" The rest of us were stumped by the weird plot that the GM had thrown at us, and with two Ofanim, we made a journey of 400 miles in only a few hours. The Gamemaster bitched for 20 minutes while he threw something together in Little Rock to convince us it was a dead end, before finally giving up and saying, "There's nothing here." In our group, "Going to Little Rock" has become synonomous with chasing unforseen leads. When the party decides to do something that isn't even following a set red herring, but instead following a red herring/plot idea that they themselves made up or thought they saw in your reasoning. Sometimes known as the "Going to Tokyo" moment, named after a Champions session where the heroes left the country (two fliers and a long-distance teleporter) to get away from assassins, leaving the GM stymied. (He evidently believed we were going to stumble around blindly as the assassins threw themselves at us. They weren't threatening anyone else, so we left to get safe and plan our next move.)
Ebony the Black Dragon
http://ebony14.livejournal.com

"Good night, and may the Good Lord take a Viking to you."

[Wiregeek]

Our GM was more disappointed than confused, when a fresh new party, faced with a wagon containing a refugee family being chased by kobolds, killed everybody except the youngest daughter, enslaved her, killed the kobolds, followed the trail back to the village, wiped out the attackers and any of the remaining population of the village that could cause us trouble...

Two playsessions later, we were making a bid for tyranny over the entire planet, the GM threw in the towel..
"No can brain today. Want cheezeburger."
From NGE: Nobody Dies, by Gregg Landsman
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5579457/1/NGE_Nobody_Dies

[classicdrogn]

As player of said Danzaiver super sentai I say, "Hey!" Really, the Bwah? for me was how Khimera latched onto him, going along with and it and lending his voice where he could to help persuade the others is filed under "spend time with brand new girlfriend, and keep her happy" and it's as good a way to have him meet the other characters socially as any, innit?

Overall, though, my biggest GM-BWAH!? induction would have to be when our 1st level D&D group, having faced and defeated a hatchling white dragon who'd somehow been captured and kept as a pet by some Kobolds, then escaped deeper into the dungeon - when we came upon them, they were searching around calling for it (sharight) and we Bwah?ed him by having my half-orc Mystic (who knew undercommon and gobbledy) ask them what the problem was, then decided to help them find their pet - we picked up Meepa as NPC guide - and after finding the dragon (Meepa got iced, literally, during the battle, poor brave kobold hero!) we decided to tie the dragon up, heal it to 1hp, and .... I forget what, but basically we captured it and the Barbarian slung it on his back to haul away like loot.

- CD, well that was incoherent... Hmm, it's been a few days since I had cheezburger, maybe no can brain?
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

[Dragonflight]

Seeing as how the PC's are about to undertake a road trip across a world crossed between Mad Max, Genesis Survivor Gaiarth and Nanoha, I'm suddenly very certain how you're going to disguise your activities as you quest for the plot device.
Now I have to figure out the band plotline...
---
Those who fear the darkness have never seen what the light can do.

[classicdrogn]

... how very MOSPEADA of us. Hadn't thought of it that way before... It has possibilities, though.

- CD
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

[Jorlem]

I was broke a GM's planned set of encounters in a D&D game via a dungeon bypass enabled by the spell Greater Stone Shape. As it turns out, 10 cubic feet plus 10 cubic feet per level is quite a bit of stone when you are level 13. After that, all the important buildings we had plot points in were made of concrete for some reason. I wonder why. (This was the same game where my original char concept was an elemental summoning shaman, and all the important battles took place in giant Forbiddance areas, which among other things, completely block summoning... I'm not bitter...)

I've recently started co-GMing a game of Exalted, and while we haven't had any major BWAH moments yet. We did have a minor one, where one of the characters convinced a village to worship a god that my co-GM had been planning to use as a minor adversary. Ah well, more plot hooks for us, right? >

If (when) they start doing crazy stuff, I'll keep you updated.
-----
Stand between the Silver Crystal and the Golden Sea.
"Youngsters these days just have no appreciation for the magnificence of the legendary cucumber."  --Krityan Elder, Tales of Vesperia.

[Wiregeek]

After that, all the important buildings we had plot points in were made of concrete for some reason

FOR SHAME.

That GM sucks. If you can't work around munchkining power-mad twink rules-lawyering assholes such as yourself, you _kill them_. You don't cockblock them blatantly enough that they notice!

Err.. Kill their toons. That is. Not Them.

I'll just be over here.
"No can brain today. Want cheezeburger."
From NGE: Nobody Dies, by Gregg Landsman
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5579457/1/NGE_Nobody_Dies

[Ebony]

Overall, though, my biggest GM-BWAH!? induction would have to be when our 1st level D&D group, having faced and defeated a hatchling white dragon who'd somehow been captured and kept as a pet by some Kobolds, then escaped deeper into the dungeon - when we came upon them, they were searching around calling for it (sharight) and we Bwah?ed him by having my half-orc Mystic (who knew undercommon and gobbledy) ask them what the problem was, then decided to help them find their pet - we picked up Meepa as NPC guide - and after finding the dragon (Meepa got iced, literally, during the battle, poor brave kobold hero!) we decided to tie the dragon up, heal it to 1hp, and .... I forget what, but basically we captured it and the Barbarian slung it on his back to haul away like loot.   

We had Fritz, the goblin who spoke 13 languages. He was a loyal lackey of our resident nobility, Sir Carmichael the Better-Than-You (not a paladin, surprisingly, and not actually the only nobility, just the only nobility not in exile from his homeland). When Fritz died bravely during a fighting retreat from superior forces, Sir Carmichael was allowed to utter that most geeky of lines: "Fritz! They killed Fritz!"
Ebony the Black Dragon
http://ebony14.livejournal.com

"Good night, and may the Good Lord take a Viking to you."

[dark seraph]

I think the best BWAH? moment me and some friends caused was in a Forgotten Realms evil campaign.

To try and show us how evil things would get, he pulled out the book of Vile Darkness.

Amongst the many things he was using, was some sort of pit that you dip a goblinod into and get a big ass monster, anything else in it takes a slow amount of acid damage till it dies.

We busted in, took over the goblin tribe, then discovered the acid damage was 1 point less than what trolls could regen.

So we threw all the tribes trolls in the pit. >

This is also the campaign where we had rust monster goblin cavalry, Gelatinous cubes for catapult ammo and a red wizard that was a god with transmutation.

By the end of the campaign, we had taken over at least 2 kingdoms and the DM said we were never to play a full evil campaign again

[Dartz]

We busted in, took over the goblin tribe, then discovered the acid damage was 1 point less than what trolls could regen.

I like your players.

Haven't been playing Ars Magica long enough to pick up any yet, but the Heavy Gear game before it was a good one. Our GM was pretty unflappable.... and epic.... so these are the closest I've got.

A character who made Revvy seem sane sometimes turned traitor on the party, getting some of us killed in action. Turns out he was a patsy tricked into belieiving his handler was SRID, when his handler was really a defector. He calmly hands over his massive handcannon of a pistol to his handler and walks off.... catastrophically failing notice checks. He probably never even heard the shot.

This character was supposedly a combat monster.

The same player also lost a character after calmly trying to intimidate someone pointing a rifle at him.... by walking towards the rifleman conspicuously flashing a knuckleduster with a grin on his face, thus suggesting that intelligence may not be a requirement for membership in the HAPF. Oh... and he also tried to stop a hopper taking off with an assault rifle - giving our infiltration unit's position away....while I was shutting down the engines in the cockpit. We suspected he was a HIRA agent after that one.... Oh. And there was the "I shoot through the hostage"

GM: "With hollowpoints?"
________________________________
--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?

[robkelk]

... how very MOSPEADA of us. Hadn't thought of it that way before... It has possibilities, though.

- CD

MOSPEADA? I was thinking more MACROSS 7...

As for "bwah?" moments, I still remember when one of the PCs got on a plane for New York, then hijacked it, demanding they fly to New York...
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[Dragonflight]

Love the evil campaign!
I've only come close to that level of epic BWAH a few times in evil games. The most recent was an Advanced Marvel Superheroes game where I borrowed a concept from the Invaders. The PC's were all playing B-grade supervillains who'd all been quietly sprung from the Supervillain jail (I'd used "Fortress" from another game somewhere because it was convenient. ) They worked for a CIA logo on a Pacific island who gave them missions who they started calling "TV's Frank," after MST3K. But the moment TV's Frank left them to their own devices, I expected them to try to take over the world, or build a superweapon, or take on a hero team. Because that's what teams of villains do, right?
Not this team. They decided they were going to invade and take over Brazil! Their reason? It's got so many economic and resource advantages going for it, the only reason it's not dominating the world economically is because of all the criminal elements undercutting its potential. And the world's hands are tied because overt action would be seen as interference. So what's obviously needed is for a villain group to take it over and build it into an economic powerhouse they can use to spearhead their future endeavors.
Meanwhile, I'd been working on plot threads involving North American hero groups, maybe some work with Eurostar and other European terrorist groups... And now the whole campaign is derailed by the PC's wanting to conquer a Latin American country...
---
Those who fear the darkness have never seen what the light can do.

[firvulag]

Hmm, Bwah moments...



Well, there was one fellow we used to game with back in high
school who had the occasional moment.



There was the time he was playing a light elemental, and we
kept convincing him to touch things. Which wouldn't have been so bad if he had
been able to consistently remember his only 'appendages' were effectively laser
beams.



Then later on, his replacement character, a paladin, and the
rest of the party were fighting a group of flying, demon-ish things (we never
found out exactly what they were) on the top of the very, very tall tower. Well
into the battle one of the party members, who was pretty obviously of an evil
alignment and made no secret f it, was about to get hit by this strange ball of green fire-ish stuff. The paladin's player decides to cast Repel Evil and put as much power as he can behind
it. A ball of green fire is obviously evil, right? Anyway, he critically
succeeded and blew the character he was trying to save completely off of the
tower, kicking off a long and intricate revenge plot by the evil character's ghost.



Later on, in a different game, another player's character character stepped in what looked like a pond. His foot got stuck, so he stepped forward,
to try and keep moving and his other foot got stuck. We encouraged him to try
and pull his feet out, and he did. He was smart enough to use only one hand the first time though. And when that got stuck we told him 'Use your other hand', and he tried
that. Sure enough it got stuck too. We told him 'Use your teeth', not
expecting him to listen to us. He dutifully tried to use his teeth to pull his hands free and ended up with his head stuck, under water. At which
point the GM gave up and what-ever he'd intended the pond to be got discarded for a
dimensional portal (we'd been running into a lot of those) and sucked him in.
-- 

Try explaining to a client just exactly where they've got to whack the latest model to make it work...
   -- Joe Bramblett

[Kurisu]

I remember a Palladium Fantasy RPG from a long time ago. We were doing the typical dungeon-crawl.

We entered a room, and the GM started to describe the area, and included the line, "You also see 3 chests."

One player immediately answers "I go for the one with the bigger nipples."

The GM has a momentary look of confusion, then 'gets it', throws the game notes up in the air, and leaves the table.

We had trouble breathing from laughing too hard.
_____
DEATH is Certain. The hour, Uncertain...

[dark seraph]

Ahhh, here's another good BWAH after chatting with my old Marshal from the Dead Lands game.

Marshal: The Cultist runs behind the saloon.
Me (as a Huxter): Okay, I take one side, the Indian can take the other. 
Indian: Right *runs one way*
Marshal: Right as you run behind the dark building, you see something in the shade.
Me: Soul Blast! *draw cards for it* Full House! (max damage dice)
Marshal: Right, Indian, you arm is blown off.
Indian: WHAT!
Me: BWAH?!
Marshal: In the gloom, you mistake the Indian for the cultist.
Indian: . . . I will kill you for this.
Me: crap >.

[ECSNorway]

In a Dresden Files game not too very long ago at all, I had just picked up our party's White Council Apprentice (I was the Vanilla Human Soldier), when we noticed we were being followed. By at least two cars full of thugs.

So I figure they're either 1) local organized crime, or 2) local supernatural crime, neither of whom is interested in coming to the attention of the authorities.

So I phone up our Voice With An Internet Connection and ask for a GPS routing past every police station in a 5-mile radius (downtown Cleveland), and proceed to follow the provided route, violating every traffic law I can think of.

Michael Westen once said that the best way to break a tail is to drive like a moron.

I say, the best way to break a tail is to go trolling for cops.
--
Sucrose Octanitrate.
Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make anything explode.

[Bob Schroeck]

Not so much a "BWAH?" moment as a "BWAH?" habit -- the folks in my Narth D&D campaign got into the habit of finding out who owned the land a dungeon was on, and then buying it before exploring. They would then go in with a legal writ and evict the monsters and NPCs that they found "squatting" on their property. Worked pretty well on the Lawful Evil types, too. Most of the time.

This practice came to a head when they bought a warehouse containing a shaft excavated down to a sunken "lost" city under the city in which they made their home base (for you COH players, think Oranbega, only not as upscale or dry). When there was a slight problem with jurisdiction over the warehouse, a pronouncement by the king in their favor accidentally ceded the entire lost city to them as their property...
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[Shepherd]

I was broke a GM's planned set of encounters in a D&D game via a dungeon bypass enabled by the spell Greater Stone Shape. As it turns out, 10 cubic feet plus 10 cubic feet per level is quite a bit of stone when you are level 13. After that, all the important buildings we had plot points in were made of concrete for some reason. I wonder why.

I can top that, since concrete walls at least make a certain amount of sense as construction material. In a D&D 2E game I was once in, the party Psionicist took the Ectoplasmic Form power so he could safely scout by sticking his head through walls and doors. After the first time he did this, EVERY SINGLE TIME he attempted this feat in the future, it turned out that the object he was trying to walk through was solid to ectoplasmic beings. If I recall correctly, this included an attempt to walk into a natural canyon wall. The party joked that some bored god was making the universe impervious to ectoplasmic penetration just to screw with the Psionicist.
Of course, the character did (to an extent) deserve to be screwed with. He insisted on playing a Psionicist despite not owning the book (he borrowed mine EVERY SINGLE WEEK), needed help virtually every time he wanted to use a psionic power, and absolutely had to play a Monitor (a winged centaur that turns into a pegasus while Spelljamming between crystal spheres) despite the fact they weren't meant to be player characters (since they could fly and got multiple natural attacks every single round).
xxx
In another campaign, the party was in a dungeon hallway and low on hit points and spells after battling a patrol. We opened the first door we came to hoping to find a place to rest, but a bunch of humanoid combatants were standing there with weapons ready. We closed the door and waited. After nothing happened for a minute, we set up camp in the hallway and rested for the night. We reopened the door the next morning and killed the monsters that were still standing there waiting.
----------------------------------------------------

"Anyone can be a winner if their definition of victory is flexible enough." - The DM of the Rings XXXV

[classicdrogn]

Thus demonstrating the value in putting points into your Saving Throw vs. Logic.

- CD, It's an especially critical skill for wizards
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

[Dragonflight]

Heh. That reminds me of a game I wasn't in, but have been told about a lot.
It was a Star Trek game set in the original series time. The players were in an overrun Federation complex, with Klingons in hot pursuit. They ran down a handful of corridors, making random picks until they realized the Klingons had managed to split up and get ahead of them with turbolifts. In a panic, they darted into a room and bolted the door.
A few moments later, the door boomed a few times as the Klingon leading the mini-invasion demanding they throw out their weapons. Well, it just so happened that the PC's had run into the armory!
The Klingons had a few moments of shocked surprise when the PC's opened the door a crack and sent out a handful of live Photon grenades...
---
Those who fear the darkness have never seen what the light can do.

[robkelk]

Heh. That reminds me of a game I wasn't in, but have been told about a lot.
It was a Star Trek game set in the original series time. The players were in an overrun Federation complex, with Klingons in hot pursuit. They ran down a handful of corridors, making random picks until they realized the Klingons had managed to split up and get ahead of them with turbolifts. In a panic, they darted into a room and bolted the door.
A few moments later, the door boomed a few times as the Klingon leading the mini-invasion demanding they throw out their weapons. Well, it just so happened that the PC's had run into the armory!
The Klingons had a few moments of shocked surprise when the PC's opened the door a crack and sent out a handful of live Photon grenades...

To be fair, the Klingon in charge of the group that was chasing you crit-failed his IQ check just before demanding "Throw out your weapons!" You just did what he said...
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[Foxboy]

Technomancer setting: A complicated "Cold War Bomb Shelter" dungeon filled with Fonzie-alike vampires. The team's spellslinger "dragon slaved" the corridors so he had a straight shot out instead of twisty li'l corridors all alike. So I'm sitting there with the map. Flat look at the caster's player. Slowly and deliberately wad up the map and toss it over my shoulder.
''We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat
them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.''

-- James Nicoll

[robkelk]

Technomancer setting: A complicated "Cold War Bomb Shelter" dungeon filled with Fonzie-alike vampires. The team's spellslinger "dragon slaved" the corridors so he had a straight shot out instead of twisty li'l corridors all alike. So I'm sitting there with the map. Flat look at the caster's player. Slowly and deliberately wad up the map and toss it over my shoulder.

Was this before or after Nanoha StrikerS? http://robkelk.ottawa-anime.org/temp/strikers-maze.png]Fanart
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[Jorlem]

I showed this thread to my co-GM, and he typed up two stories from a long running WoD game he is in.  Enjoy.

 First, the time my WOD group blew up much of downtown LA with a single propane tank.... you see, we had been sent there on a mission to squash a vampire riot which would blow the Masquerade to bits. Our stated cover was that we were supposed to be guarding this warehouse. Well... that wasn't getting anywhere, so we went trolling for our targets to get their attention. Upon finding a group, we decided to dispatch them. The first method that came to mind, throw a small propane tank at them, then light it on fire. This all seems mundane till the mage decides to cast amplify fire on it.... he rolled  a LOT of successes. The resulting explosion was a couple times the heat of the sun, significantly larger than normal, and managed to hit a gas main lighting up the entire area. the only reason we survived this was  GM discretion and that we were in a special made heavy armored vehicle going the other way as fast as possible.

Another time was when our group's Vampire decided to use the mind-reading spell on an antediluvian. Needless to say she picked up a rather interesting set of derangements. One of which made her constantly keep checking if her gun was loaded. Another, the more interesting of the two, made her hallucinate. Hilarity ensues. During said fight she had lost her prosthetic leg, and so my character, a werewolf who is also our craft master, decided to more or less raid a hardware store to get the necessary supplies to make her a new one. Upon coming around the corner with the supplies in hand, the GM describes to her "you see a rather shaggy looking man wielding a hammer coming at you with a nasty grin." She replies with "OH MY GOD!! its a homicidal ZZ Top!" and unloads on me. At this point we now must sent 2 characters to the hospital to deal with leg problems.

-----
Stand between the Silver Crystal and the Golden Sea.
"Youngsters these days just have no appreciation for the magnificence of the legendary cucumber."  --Krityan Elder, Tales of Vesperia.